High School by Tim Heidecker

Because *High School* is a Tim Heidecker album, you’re always waiting for the punch line, or at least the moment when his earnestness crosses into parody. The twist here is that there isn’t really a twist—just 10 breezy, soft-rockish songs about the follies of adolescence and the bittersweet nostalgia that follows. Not that it isn’t funny: “Chillin’ in Alaska” ends with his cousin making a move on a girl before he can summon the nerve. The Kurt Vile-featuring “Sirens of Titan” mentions waterbeds not once but twice, but it also reflects on America’s decision to enter Iraq (“Should be an easy war to win, but you can never tell”) and how he was fiscally conservative until he went to college—flinty bits of reality that make the memories just a little uneasy. If he keeps this up, you might just call him a songwriter.

Since 2016, Tim Heidecker has chronicled the annals of adulthood on a series of supreme singer-songwriter albums. The crushing devastation of divorce and the existential malaise of middle-age, the minutiae of home ownership and the ritual of family vacation, child rearing and global warming: Heidecker has handled it all with humor and heart. But, there’s one pivotal lodestar of human development he has yet to mine — that’s right, High School. High School is Tim’s new album with first single “Buddy.” Produced by Heidecker, Drew Erickson, Eric D. Johnson and Mac DeMarco, High School sees Heidecker emerging as an increasingly playful and poignant story teller, infusing childhood tales with new gravity. This album chronicles not only the adventures and misadventures of life as a Pennsylvania teen in the early ’90s, but also how it felt to lose a juvenile sense of mystery and possibility as an adult. This album is about high school — and, really, the way it helped shape everything else. *NOTE: A free album download will accompany every ticket to Tim's No More Bullshit Tour* High School Tracklist 1. Buddy 2. Chillin’ In Alaska 3. Future Is Uncertain 4. Get Back Down To Me 5. I’ve Been Losing 6. Punch In The Gut 7. Stupid Kid 8. Sirens of Titan (feat. Kurt Vile) 9. What Did We Do With Our Time? 10. Kern River

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7.5 / 10

The comedian-turned-musician’s concept album about his adolescence tunnels toward a series of deeper truths about how we end up as the adults we are.

6.5 / 10

Heidecker's 'Fear of Death' follow-up is a country-inflected, folk-pop portrait of the artist as a young man, but it doesn't play to his strengths as a performer.

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For someone as accomplished as Tim Heidecker, it’s probably a feat in itself to be able to squeeze reminiscing into his schedule, likely somewhere between a live show and an interview.